I ran across the short BBC series Our World War on Netflix and took a look. I didn’t see any threads on this so here it goes. No spoiler boxes so if you want to go see it first here is your chance. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a 3 episode series about WWI based on first hand accounts. Only three hours long so not a big time commitment.
1st episode: "The First Day"about the Battle of Mons, the first battle the British army fought in WWI.
2nd episode: “Pals” about the Battle of the Somme using the story of a soldier ordered to be a member of a firing squad.
3rd episode: “War Machine” about the Battle of Amiens which was the beginning of the end of the war.
First the bad.
They tried way too hard to make it look “modern” using camera tricks and effects. The cameras mounted to weapons and bodies were over used and jarring. For the most part using modern music was a negative. Probably the biggest negative for me. Every time they used the effect it took me right out of the scene.
WWI is ripe to be used as a subject for a long series. Three episodes did not give a good enough overview of the breadth of the war. Not even close.
There were obvious budget constraints. The did a decent job of using the budget the best they could but it caused some problems. The effect used to show Germans being mowed down by machine gun fire was laughable. The obviously had a few extras and multiplied them to look like more with animation.
Budget probably also caused another problem. Where was the trench warfare? Probably the defining characteristic of the war along with gas attacks. But there was just a brief scene in episode 2 with them in a trench. The rest was them walking through woods. They turned the Battle of the Somme into a skirmish. Only when one of them visited the field hospital did they attempt to show the enormity of the battle. And failed.
The good:
It was a series about WWI. So many stories that haven’t been told compared to WWII.
I didn’t think they would be able to make me feel for individuals in just an hour but they did. In particular the 1st episode.
They actually taught me something. I knew nothing about the opening battles of the war or the Pals Battalions.
Tanks. WWI tanks. I don’t remember any other show or movie showing a tank crew in WWI.
Other things might come to me. What did anyone else think?